Drama. We all know it and have heard of it. It’s on our TV, in the magazines, and in everyday life. But, there is a bigger drama out there not many are aware of: salon drama.

After working in the beauty industry since 1992, I’ve decided to touch base on this mane event. Of course, the disclaimer: the names have been changed blah blah blah will be assumed.

While truly non-fictional in every word I will endeavor in this tale of woes and foes, it is at best fiction and biographical. Where to start? Any ideas? I’m open to suggestion. Several salons later, several hundreds of salon clients and crazy bosses later, and then the rest…

Give me some tips. Should I start with the last and end with the first? Chain salon or private salon? Regardless their daily settings may have changed by location or mood (or who was fired or canned that day or week). However, the drama co-exists across all universal encounters of the beauty industry.

Here is one day in the life of drama in the follicular sense:

Kam: OMG girl! Did you SEE that guys butt?

Tim: No, today’s not my day to be looking that way. Sorry.

Kam: (puffing on his smoke) You should have seen the sweeties down in Philly last night! TOTALLY to die for!

Dino: Well I face slammed the bar last night.

A woman walks in, all three stylists slowly peer from the break room saying, “Who wants THIS lady? She looks like an Irish train wreck!?” They pause, look at her, she looks back nervously as if they are looking at her naked. She shuffles her feet looking back at the front door as if wondering if she made a mistake.

Dino: I guess I will take her.

Dino slowly walks the long walk from back-breakroom to receptionist area, not bothering to smile or pretend she is happy to make 50 percent of a $14 haircut.

Dino: Can I help you?

The Lady: Yes, I wanted to see about getting a perm today with really really tight curls.

Dino: (thinks, “Ugh, another blue rod nightmare!”) OK, follow me.

The Lady and Dino walk 10 feet to an electric orange colored hair station with poor lighting while rap music blasts in the background.

Dino: So, you want a tight curl you say?

The Lady: Yes, I had a perm last time but it didn’t seem to take.

Dino: (thinks, every old lady says this every time!) OK, let’s go to the shampoo bowl.

They walk to a crappy uncomfortable shampoo chair and bowl.

Meanwhile, the two stylists left in the break room get bored. “Time for another cigarette,” one says. “I think I’ll get chinese food but last time I got the craps,” the other replies.

Dino: Not unless you want to split my SIDES open again!? (The Lady looks up listening to the conversation, the phone rings)

Kam: (answering the phone) Hair’s My Follicle’s Incorporated How Can I Help You?

Phone Customer: Yes, do you do butt waxing?

Kam: Ummm, I dunno let me check? (looks back, yells to the salon, “Hey! Do we wax butts?” but gets no reply). Sorry, we don’t wax butts ma’am… (hides a giggle). Hangs up, yells back to the salon: OK, I just got the WEIRDEST call about butt waxing, I mean WHO wants to rip the hairs out of some perv’s A**?

Dino: YOU would! (laughs)

Meanwhile, Sarah storms in from the front door for her shift one hour late with a hung over from horrible look on her face.

Dino just watches, ignoring the attitude sensed while regretting the next two hours that will be spent wrapping near toothpick sized blue rollers on a full head while using wrapping papers thinner than anything a cigarette is smoked with. Dino tells The Lady, “Follow me.” They walk back to the horrific orange station and Dino starts to section off the hair in nine areas just as learned in beauty school. Dino thinks, “GAWD! Why me?!” 30 minutes later The Lady’s hair is wrapped in a flurry of blue rods and the rotten egg smell is making everyone sick. Dino walks back to the breakroom dying to have a smoke while everyone else has been sitting in the back complaining about how “slow” it is. They vaguely discuss food, flip through gossip magazines and discuss which Hollywood star has fake boobs or needs to return to rehab. Another customer walks in and they all, again, slowly peek around the corner and stare….

They all are dreading the manager who is returning today after his day off; they all talk about how he is from “hell” but they never say how to fix their “dilemma.”

Nessa’s Quest

Chapter 1

She wasn’t sure what was happening. But, something familiar about it made her feel a sense of comfort, almost like the time she wore her yellow slicker raincoat and although the weatherman said, “100 percent chance of a soppy day today,” the sun remained like a steadfast alter boy on his way to Sunday’s ritual.

“I dunno,” she said to herself in consolation trying to keep a tear from escaping her eye. Showing too much of this type of emotion would let her guard down and in this family, it’s just not what her family did. Nessa knew better than to do anything different than crinkle her toes, sit up straight, look up to the sky and wait. For anything else was a satire in her mother’s eyes and a drama club dropout tragedy in her father’s head.

Nessa sat there on the bench of the hospital alone. The busy traffic of doctors, nurses, and annoying HMO clipboard holding staff kept her in company the way a stockpile of computerized clip-art might feel company within its own category of other clip-arts.

“Why am I here?” she asked herself as she sat on that bench of hard resin-wood and 1970’s plastic padded handles. Nessa’s mother shuffled her way over next to Nessa, sat down, and placed her hands in her face helplessly sobbing. Nessa did not know what to do, her family were never allowed to show emotion. Should Nessa hug her mother, dare ask what’s wrong, or leave her alone? Nessa wondered…

Confused, she stood up, raised her eyes to the sky, kept any show of fear from her face and walked toward the end of the hallway. She did not know why she left her sobbing mother that day. But, something resignated in her 11 year old body that told her it was the right, and only thing to do. Not looking back, and yet taking a pause to push on the exit door’s handles, Nessa walked out and entered bright light.

Chapter 2

“Precious running through the forest, sniffing all of the flowers,” sang sweetly in Nessa’s head before suddenly jolting up to a sitting position with soaked sweat hair. After a few shallow but shaky breaths, Nessa realized she was just sleeping and woke up with warning without knowing why.

She flopped back down on her springboard mattress with the Pretty Puppy comforter pattern. She touched and ran her fingers across the edge of Puppy’s drawn nose, remembering how she absolutely had to have it as her bed’s blanket or she felt she would just die. She wasn’t even thinking about yesterday.

Tap-tap-tap! Someone was at the door. She’d been told before that answering the house door while no parents were home could be a dangerous situation. “There’s crazy criple-heads out there Nessy that would just LOVE to snatch you up, eat you like a piece of five day old peanut butter brittle while on a darned drug haze of a mind!” her paw would tell her. Paw lived with Nessa and her family in their 1940’s style home. He called her ‘Nessy.’

Tap-tap-tap! That same person was at the door. Nessa knew she was home alone that day. Afterall, she did walk out on her mother and family yesterday while at the hospital. Not knowing what happened to them, she didn’t know what to expect. But then again, does any 11 year old really know WHAT to expect in any part of life?

She slowly tip toed down the steps, “crreeeek!” went step numbers 4 and 12. Hardwood floors abounded in that house like cavities abounded in a mouth full of a hard candy lover. Large palm trees in pots kept the front door side-windows from becoming too translucent to where outsiders could see you run naked down the foyer hallway. Not that anyone in this family would do that, but it’s been a thought.

Nessa peeked through the foliaged window pane as if a soldier cameoflauged by wilerness gear. The badge on the lady’s pink suit with too large of shoulder pads read, “Dept. of Family Services.”

“Family?” Nessa thought. Then, “Services?” she pondered too. “They’ve got services for families in Macer County?” she said outloud before realizing she may have said it too loud.

Tap-tap-tap! Yup, she said it too loud. “Heelllooo! Little girl, I can HEAR you!” the padded shoulder pink lady said. “Can you please open the door? I need to talk to you. It’s about your mom.”

Nessa’s heart sunk with a thunk only a personal scrooge would appreciate. ‘About her mom’ she though sarcastically. When was it EVER about Nessa? Feeling a sense of regret, Nessa slowly unlocked, paused, then opened the door.

Chapter 3

The dirt sounded like birds chirping as she drown down the dessert road. She wasn’t sure how birds and dirt roads and tires all made sense but to Freeda it did.

“Hello? You NEED to let me OUT of here!” Freeda also heard. Oh yeah, that was the guy she stuffed in her trunk.

What was her plan? She needed to think straight. “Tick-tack-tick-tack…” she said softly to herself. It was something she said everytime she needed to calm her mind and center her soul. However, her mind was not calm and her soul was screaming. “What AM I doing!?” she said as she slammed on the brakes, sliding the car as the kidnapped man’s body went “thump” in her trunk. “No one can say that I don’t have any ‘junk in MY trunk’!” she sarcastically said as she turned the ignition key off.

“Tick-tack… Oh! That’s not working!” Freeda said. She was getting frustrated. She was confused and felt like a displaced kitty at the animal shelter. Should she dump the guy alive or knock him out and leave him on the side of the road. Decisions…. The guy DID try to do what no man should ever do to Freeda: that was to talk to her about her family.

Why did this happen? They were simply at a coffee shop in downtown 3rd Avenue and he looked cute; almost fatherly cute if that is not sick and twisted. Some girls would understand that connection, Freeda thought. He seemed tame but a little rough around the edges with a lime twist. Or, maybe it was lemonade? Who knows. He just started mentioning things like, “What kind of family have you come from?” and then, “I bet you were a REAL trouble maker to your mother when you were 13!” That was the straw that took the last sip in her mint-mocha-soy-frappiccino before she grabbed him by the arm, took him to the alley and knocked his head into the wall. A few karate classes in her day never hurt, and the rest about how he got in the trunk was history.

Chapter 4

“Hi, I’m here to speak to you about your family situation,” the lady from social services said. “My family?” Nessa replied. What ‘situation’ now did she have to face and unface?

“Yes, you see Nessa, we got a call that you’ve been living here without proper parental supervision,” the lady said. “A child in this state is not allowed to stay home alone until he or she is 13. You must only be about 11 or 12, right?”

“Well, I’ll be 12 in November,” Nessa said.

The lady got out her notebook and started writing. “Where are your parents?” she asked.

“Ummm….” Nessa did not know what to say. Her family was always in some sort of trouble. Mom was always away mentally, or so it seemed, and her dad only visited about every other year claiming he was a pilot with a ‘lifestyle your mother never understood.’ He would often come home from his ‘pilot missions’ smelling like cigar smoke and three day old burbon-breath.